Jukwaa Hackers at Work (Again) | JUKWAA: Kenyan Discussion Platform

Onyango Oloo
Administrator

Jukwaa Administrator

Posts: 5,504

Jukwaa Hackers at Work (Again) Dec 27, 2011 6:02:41 GMT 3

Quote

Post by Onyango Oloo on Dec 27, 2011 6:02:41 GMT 3

A few hours ago, when I was checking my email messages, I came across mail sent to me from a site called "amooka.com" acknowledging a comment on one of the stories they had posted on their forum. The address they used is one of those you get from spammers and scammers-something similar to my actual email address.

I saw that the comment was indeed from ME-something I had posted right here on Jukwaa.

Four interesting things:

(1) I have never even heard of amooka.com, leave alone posting anything there.

(2) I do not know how these fellows got my (supposed) email address.

(3) On their site somebody has registered themselves as "onyano Oloo" (note the deliberate typo) but using an address similar but not identical to my authentic email address as their contact.

(4) They have come here to Jukwaa and lifted and copy pasted original content from this discussion forum.

Here is the original piece of mail sent to me, showing the identifying information where the email is emanating from:

Return-Path: <amooka@gator1845.hostgator.com>
Received: from gator1845.hostgator.com (gator1845.hostgator.com. [184.173.245.23])
by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id o30si20841380yhl.142.2011.12.25.20.49.05
(version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=OTHER);
Sun, 25 Dec 2011 20:49:05 -0800 (PST)
Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of amooka@gator1845.hostgator.com designates 184.173.245.23 as permitted sender) client-ip=184.173.245.23;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of amooka@gator1845.hostgator.com designates 184.173.245.23 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=amooka@gator1845.hostgator.com
Received: from amooka by gator1845.hostgator.com with local (Exim 4.69)
(envelope-from <amooka@gator1845.hostgator.com>)
id 1Rf2Ui-0003yI-Ne
for onyangooloo@gmail.com; Sun, 25 Dec 2011 22:49:04 -0600
Date: Sun, 25 Dec 2011 22:49:04 -0600
To: onyangooloo@gmail.com
From: Amooka <foxxjango@gmail.com>
Subject: We confirm your comment
Message-ID: <5ebb7acde97699bb7047e1c406f65865@amooka.com>
X-Priority: 3
X-Mailer: PHPMailer (phpmailer.sourceforge.net) [version 2.0.4]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Content-Type: text/html; charset="utf-8"
X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report
X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - gator1845.hostgator.com
X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - gmail.com
X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [854 32007] / [47 12]
X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - gator1845.hostgator.com
X-BWhitelist: no
X-Source: /usr/bin/php
X-Source-Args: /usr/bin/php /home/amooka/public_html/index.php
X-Source-Dir: amooka.com:/public_html
X-Source-Sender:
X-Source-Auth: amooka
X-Email-Count: 4
X-Source-Cap: YW1vb2thO2Ftb29rYTtnYXRvcjE4NDUuaG9zdGdhdG9yLmNvbQ==

Amooka foxxjango@gmail.com via gator1845.hostgator.com

7:49 AM (22 hours ago)

to me

"Dear onyano Oloo,

This email is to confirm that you have successfully created a new comment on the issue amooka.com/politics/politics-news/government-and-politics/1969-raila-critic-appointed-legal-advisor.html#jacommentid:16 at Amooka with the following details:

Comment URL: amooka.com/politics/politics-news/government-and-politics/1969-raila-critic-appointed-legal-advisor.html#jacommentid:16

Comment details: The media is deliberately misleading the public.
Inserting Miguna's name into a headline-whether in Jukwaa or the Daily Nation-makes the story more juicy than it actually is.

Paul Mwangi has NOT replaced Miguna Miguna.

Paul Mwangi has replaced Mugambi Imanyara who resigned last year.

Paul Mwangi's title is Adviser, Legal Affairs.

Miguna Miguna's title was Adviser, Coalition Affairs & Joint Secretary to the Permanent Committee on the Management of Coalition Affairs.

Paul Mwangi was appointed by the Permanent Secretary, Office of the Prime Minister, Mohammed Isahakia.

Miguna Miguna's appointment letter was signed by President Mwai Kibaki.

In short, Prime Minister Raila Odinga has yet to name the person who has replaced Miguna Miguna.

I hope this clears up the confusion.

Read more: jukwaa.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=6281#ixzz1hc4rTXBP.

Please check your mailbox periodically as we shall notify you if there is any new reply on this issue.

Sincerely, Amooka"

Here is the url link to the amooka story I was talking about:

www.amooka.com/politics/politics-news/government-and-politics/1969-raila-critic-appointed-legal-advisor.html

I know there are so many cyber sleuths on Jukwaa.

Can someone help track down these guys, especially the fellow trying to impersonate me on that forum by swiping content from Jukwaa?

I will be very grateful for any assistance in this regard.

Onyango Oloo
Jukwaa Administrator

Last Edit: Dec 27, 2011 21:34:51 GMT 3 by Onyango Oloo

Onyango Oloo
Administrator

Jukwaa Administrator

Posts: 5,504

Jukwaa Hackers at Work (Again) Dec 27, 2011 19:00:36 GMT 3

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Post by Onyango Oloo on Dec 27, 2011 19:00:36 GMT 3

Here is a report back.

Thanks to the efficient and quick endeavours of one of Jukwaa's super sleuths (name withheld, I may need his detective services against one of you lurkers-just kidding) I was able to track the person I was looking for right down to his house somewhere in Japan. Incidentally he is a jango from Kisumu who is called... wait for it.... Jango!

I hooked up with him on Facebook and hereby reproduce our correspondence:

Onyango Oloo
7 hours ago

Dear Jango:

Greetings.

How are you?

How is life in Otokoyoma?

I got an email from you which puzzled me.

I am not registered on amooka.com;neither have I posted anything on that forum. My name is not "onyano".

But the curious thing is that comment is actually from me-when I posted it almost a month ago on a website I founded and currently administer-JUKWAA.

Who is that imposter lifting content from my site and pretending to be me.

More importantly, how did you find out my email address? It is actually NOT "onyangooloo@gmail.com"-something close.

Please get back to me.

Onyango Oloo
Nairobi, Kenya

Jango Foxx
2 hours ago

Greetings Bwana Oloo
Pole sana for thinking that someone is imposing you.
I together with some colleagues are building an information provider for Kenya and if possible the EA region.
We were doing test runs to pick up news and comments from Kenyan related sites, intention is to pull the stories with the comments and give credit where it belongs, by quoting the source in full.
The program is not running as expected and it might look that you were made to register for a forum you do not know of.
Pole sana, and thanks for the alert as we will have to rethink our roll out strategy for amooka.

Onyango Oloo
2 hours ago

Thanks Jango for getting back to me so promptly. No hard feelings. Keep up the good work. I will send you a friend request just now.

Last Edit: Dec 27, 2011 19:02:36 GMT 3 by Onyango Oloo

amadain
Senior Member

Posts: 318

Jukwaa Hackers at Work (Again) Dec 28, 2011 5:24:10 GMT 3

Quote

Post by amadain on Dec 28, 2011 5:24:10 GMT 3

His excuse is a bit fishy. If he programmed the site to pull content and quote the sources, don't you think your contribution would have displayed as a sort of article rather than just a random comment? It seems he's trying to make his site a bit more prestigious by creating fake profiles of folks who are well known on the Kenyan interwebs.

Anyway, I guess your Jukwaa super sleuth directed you to a "Whois" site.

For readers who may need information like this in the future, just insert the suspect website into a who-is search engine such as:

www.whois.sc

It should tell you "who is" behind the website. For example, just put that amooka site into the link I provided and see the wealth of info it provides.

Last Edit: Dec 28, 2011 5:26:03 GMT 3 by amadain

Onyango Oloo
Administrator

Jukwaa Administrator

Posts: 5,504

Jukwaa Hackers at Work (Again) Dec 28, 2011 8:06:22 GMT 3

Quote

Post by Onyango Oloo on Dec 28, 2011 8:06:22 GMT 3

Dec 28, 2011 5:24:10 GMT 3 amadain said:

His excuse is a bit fishy. If he programmed the site to pull content and quote the sources, don't you think your contribution would have displayed as a sort of article rather than just a random comment? It seems he's trying to make his site a bit more prestigious by creating fake profiles of folks who are well known on the Kenyan interwebs.

Anyway, I guess your Jukwaa super sleuth directed you to a "Whois" site.

For readers who may need information like this in the future, just insert the suspect website into a who-is search engine such as:

www.whois.sc

It should tell you "who is" behind the website. For example, just put that amooka site into the link I provided and see the wealth of info it provides.

Amadain:

Thanks for your reflections.

This being the holiday season and what not I decided to be indulgent. What was important for me is that he 'fessed up which is a courageous step.

And yes, about IP tracking and all that-many people on this forum are quite familiar with tools like whois etc. But there are some people who go the extra mile. I will not elaborate.

Onyango Oloo
Nairobi

nereah
Vintage Member

Posts: 2,384

Jukwaa Hackers at Work (Again) Dec 28, 2011 20:07:56 GMT 3

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Post by nereah on Dec 28, 2011 20:07:56 GMT 3

cyber space should be the next wonder of the world.not even those who claim to know,the finest of them all,can with utmost certainty, proclaim perfection.

anything can go wrong anytime i guess and the enduring lesson is that once you sign up into the internet, you are the cyber equivalent with that person who has just been issued with a driving license.the risks especially from the unknown are enormous.

you may be the best driver but always be sure of one thing:that it takes the carelessness of a reckless, ill-mannered road user to inflict grievous harm on you or your machine.so is the cyberspace.

i have first hand experience having been a victim and if you ask me the best way of being safe in the cyberspace is by being predictable and open with the limited info you would wish to share.

today, the technology is such that with the touch of a mobile phone screen,your data can be wiped out,copied or downloaded(leverage series or person of interest series style).

in he jukwaa archive there is a site that was created by two respected members in diaspora, one of whom has been missing in action for more than two years now.this popular website was very critical and explosive in its mission and extreme due diligence was taken in hosting it such that its host server could be traced to some far continent and beyond hacking.

but that was many years ago and technology has changed. as jukwaa's biggest o ;D illustrate with his personal experience in this thread, its indeed a small world when it comes to cyberspace.

my centi tatu.

note: to jango, i hope you will sign up for jukwaa's membership that is if you are not already a member, when the doors are re-opened hopefully very soon. i can tell that you have some ideas and as you can see, jukwaa is the place to be!